•
Four Paws Dog Park, 109 W. 53rd St., Anderson. Open dawn to dusk
year-round. Day passes are $10, monthly passes are $25, and annual
passes are $150. The park is for dogs over 4 months old, and proof of
up-to-date shot records is required. Call 765-642-8117 for more
information or visit www.southandersonvet.com/four-paws-dog-park for membership information.

Chesterfield

Chesterfield
Dog Park, inside Makepeace Park. Take Memorial Drive from East Main
Street/Indiana 32 and follow to the park. Membership is $5 annually.
Call Chesterfield Town Hall at 765-378-3331 to register for a
membership.

"We're
here about every day whenever the weather permits," Phil Braschear
said. "He's got his own friends here. He's got his best buddies and they
all swarm each other as soon as they walk in."

Phil Braschear used a tennis ball launcher to throw the ball across the park and Loki tore after the ball at a breakneck pace.

"I used to think Loki was super fast," he said. "He's got a good buddy named Yogi, and Yogi smokes him."

The
only thing the lab loves more than tennis balls is water. The pup will
find and frolic in any puddle, big or small. After heavy rains in late
April, Loki jumped into Fall Creek at Falls Park, and before the
Braschears knew it, he was drifting downstream.

"He's grounded
from water right now," Phil Braschear said. "But look, he finds it
anyway." The pup was rolling around in a small puddle near the park's
fencing as he spoke.

Loki is a high-energy dog, and that energy
can be easily expended at the park. Additionally, he is the Braschears'
only dog, and before becoming a regular at Falls Bark, he wasn't
socialized with other dogs, Tina Braschear said.

"I was a little
nervous about bringing him at first, especially since he was a puppy,"
she said. "I thought 'What if they mow him down? But this has been a
great experience. Everybody is his buddy."

Falls Bark began as a
Pendleton Heights High School senior class project for students who
graduated summa cum laude, according to Logan Marshall, a PHHS grad who
helped spearhead the project during his senior year.

The project
started in fall 2017 with 22 students. They broke into groups focused on
fundraising, communicating with the Town of Pendleton Parks Board and
planning, with a few kids who "floated" between each group, Marshall
said.

"I'm an Eagle Scout, and there was another student who was
one also, and we're really familiar with the trails at Falls Park," he
said. "So there was a lot of work with planning and mapping things out
there."

Marshall, who is now a Purdue University sophomore
majoring in industrial engineering, said one of the challenges that the
group had to overcome was submitting an application to the Department of
Natural Resources and the parks department to begin building.

After spending their entire senior year working on the park, he said the students are still invested in the project.

"The grand opening was in March and I was there," he said. "Eleven
students came back for it, and it was a really cool thing to see, all of
that hard work coming to fruition."

DALEVILLE ADDING PARK FOR PUPS

Pendleton
isn't the only town sporting a new dog park this summer. Daleville will
debut its dog park this summer, Deputy Clerk-Treasurer Trina Richardson
said.

Richardson said the park has been in the town's sights for
years. When Daleville started looking into building onto the Daleville
Town Hall Park, 8029 S. Walnut St., the pup park was always a part of
the discussion.

"We
talked about the dog park in the first place years ago," she said. "We
first considered it in 2014 and then again in 2017, when we began
looking ahead. We already knew where it would go, and we already knew
what fixtures we wanted to have."

The park is dedicated to K9
Nugent, who was put down in March. There will be a plaque, with some of
his ashes, dedicated to the police dog at the entry of the park.

"Nugent was special to all of us, so dedicating the park to him really gives it an extra meaning," she said.

Richardson said she's excited for the park's grand opening, and so are Daleville residents.

"I'm not exaggerating, we've had about 500 calls from people asking, 'When are you going to open? Is it open yet?'" she said.

The
official opening date hasn't been set yet, but Richardson said the park
will open the same day as the splash pad, which will likely be in late
May or early June.

Richardson said she's looking forward to seeing
dogs and residents socialize over the new attraction, something that
Tina Braschear said she's enjoyed at Falls Bark.

"It not only
makes the dogs socialize but it makes the humans interact, too," she
said. "It's like a little club that we're all in. We're all getting to
know each other and it's building the community in a way that wasn't
there before, and that's been really fun."